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ABSTRACT
Although a growing body of literature has touted e-participation as a means of facilitating greater citizen participation in policy decision-making processes, little is known about the driving forces behind citizens’ use of e-participation. Based on a literature review of social capital and citizen participation, this study develops and tests a model proposing that three dimensions of social capital and three dimensions of citizen participation management should be positively associated with e-participation in agenda setting. Using data from a Korean e-participation survey conducted in 2009, we found that citizens tend to be more active e-participants when they have greater trust in government and are weakly tied to offline social groups. We also found that citizen participants’ perception of government responsiveness to their input can facilitate their e-participation. The study findings imply that local governments should pay more attention to the function of public trust in local government and provide quality feedback in response to citizen input. They should also be sensitive to how the social factors of e-participants can facilitate involvement in agenda setting.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Seoul Metropolitan Government for supporting this research project. An earlier version of this article was presented at 2014 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jooho Lee
Dr Jooho Lee is an associate professor at School of Public Administration and an associate director of Global Digital Governance Lab at University of Nebraska, Omaha. He has been doing research on the antecedents and consequences of IT adoption and social and organizational networks. He earned his Ph.D. in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University (E-mail: [email protected]).
Soonhee Kim
Dr Soonhee Kim is a professor of Public Administration at the Korea Development Institute (KDI) School of Public Policy and Management. Professor Kim’s areas of expertise include public management, human resources management, e-government, and leadership development. She was inducted into the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) as a member of its 2016 class of Fellows (E-mail: [email protected]).